MacVidCards,
With all due respect, what was your reasoning for replacing the internal HDD with an SSD and not using an external enclosure for a boot SSD?
By doing so:
1. You had to buy tools.
2. You need an SSD of at least 500gb to replace the internal storage. Compared to a 120gb boot drive, its ~$60 vs ~$200 for the 500gb.
3. The old drive needs a new home. Is the HDD going to live in an enclosure hanging off that same Mac? If so, you just swapped the internal with the external.
4. Theres almost no speed improvement over an external SSD enclosure.
You also, you had a pretty significant, warranty-risking effort to replace the drive. I admit from reading your posts on the Mac Pro forum, you are a qualified Mac surgeon, but still, for what purpose?
There was no cost savings - perhaps a cost increase - and theres virtually no speed increase.
The only upside of which I can think is you can now, through an ugly hack, enable TRIM. And you saved a USB port.
Regards,
I see you don't realize that I own and run an upgrade company.
If replacing a hard drive was a problem for me I would be in a world of hurt.
Do I think everyone should do this? Probably not. If you have sausage fingers or are ham handed, let someone else do it. (Why do both of those phrases reference meat? Hmm.)
One of the trickier parts was the bits of wire you poke in to release the logic board. It seems iFixit really wants to sell you their hacked clothes hangers so they leave that bit especially ambiguous.
Have a laptop with a nice screen handy, lay the mini on a soft cloth and take your time. And I mean, don't have something you need to do in 2 hours so you rush.
I am working on eGPU solutions for Mac products like this and that requires multiple reboots, all day long. I thought I could live with the base Mini, I just wanted something to represent the product line and I wanted to walk into an Apple store with $500 and walk out with a Mini. And I did.
And I regretted it with every boot and mouse click. I don't know how, but the Mini seemed to suffer more than any machine in recent memory from 5,400 slow down. I think 5,400 RPM in a 2.5" is slower than 5,400 RPM in a 3.5".
In any case, I have 10 or so Macs here and every single one has an SSD boot drive of some sort. I even have an old white Macbook that runs as a WiFi print server. It has an old 64GB SSD from the early days.
I have another Mini ordered right now. I also have a couple spare 256 Gb blades form machines that got upgraded to 1TB blades. The 2nd Mini is going to my development partner so that our results can be cross-tested by us both, so we need identical machines. I have ordered another T6 security bit and already have the PCIE cable and a 256GB SATA SSD.
I would feel rather foolish staring at an ugly little wort of an enclosure for the next few years knowing that the only reason it was sitting on my desk taking up a USB port and space was because I was too frightened to open up my Mini.
In short, i would see it as a symbol of failure or a symbol of Apple winning. Instead, I won. I bought their cheapest computer, and for a little money and time I turned it into a bad-ask machine. Believe it or not, I have managed to get 1/4 of the way through Far Cry 4 on my lowly, entry level Mini. At 4K 60 Hz with visual effects at "Ultra".
While much of the work is being done by the Titan-X connected by TB2, the SSD is what keeps load times acceptable. And the cross-booting from OS X to Windows and back.
As for the crappy 5,400 rpm 500GB drive that it came with...I may put it in a PS3, I may sell it, I may create an emergency disk image, don't know. Right now it is in a plastic bin full of other spinning drives I don't want or need.
